Provide senior metallurgical direction across an operating processing facility and a significant future plant development. The role will connect immediate operational improvement with longer term process design, ensuring that recovery assumptions, testwork and engineering decisions remain technically sound and commercially focused.

This position requires someone equally comfortable improving current plant performance and representing the owner during project studies and design. The Principal Metallurgist will operate with considerable autonomy and influence technical decisions across both existing and future assets.

Company

An international mining business with producing operations and a growing portfolio of development opportunities. The company is investing in its processing capability as it works to improve current performance while advancing a new production facility.

The business maintains a compact technical team and offers direct exposure to operational leadership, engineering partners and major investment decisions.

Accountabilities

• Provide metallurgical leadership across operating assets, technical studies and project development.
• Establish and verify the processing assumptions used in operational plans, engineering studies and investment evaluations.
• Develop recovery models that account for ore variability, metallurgical response, reagent consumption, energy requirements and operating cost.
• Define metallurgical testwork programmes and ensure results are suitable for process selection and engineering design.
• Interpret testwork outcomes and translate them into practical recommendations for flowsheet development.
• Represent the owner when working with engineering firms, laboratories and specialist consultants.
• Maintain control of technical scope and challenge assumptions that could affect recovery, cost or project value.
• Provide metallurgical direction during the design of a future processing facility.
• Ensure the proposed plant can respond effectively to changes in ore characteristics and mineralogy.
• Support improvement initiatives within the existing operation, including recovery reconciliation and reagent optimisation.
• Identify opportunities to improve crushing, grinding and downstream processing performance.
• Contribute to process mass balances, water balances, energy requirements and product specifications.
• Provide metallurgical input into capital and operating cost estimates.
• Explain technical risks, opportunities and value drivers clearly to business leaders.
• Prioritise work according to its potential effect on recovery, cost, production and overall project value.
• Maintain regular communication with operational and project leadership regarding progress, risks and key decisions.

Qualifications

• Degree in metallurgical engineering, chemical engineering or a related discipline.
• Strong experience within copper, gold or comparable mineral processing operations.
• Demonstrated capability in metallurgical testwork, recovery modelling and process design.
• Experience spanning both operating plants and project development environments.
• Strong understanding of flotation, leaching and comminution processes.
• Practical knowledge of plant performance, metallurgical accounting and process optimisation.
• Experience working with engineering firms in an owner or client representative capacity.
• Ability to review technical designs and challenge engineering recommendations constructively.
• Experience across different operating scales and levels of project maturity would be beneficial.
• Commercial awareness and the ability to connect metallurgical decisions with cost, recovery and project economics.
• Comfortable dividing attention between operational support and longer term project development.
• Able to operate independently and maintain progress without constant direction.
• Strong communication skills and the confidence to engage with technical specialists and senior leadership.
• Suitable for either an established principal level professional or a capable senior metallurgist ready to assume broader technical authority.